Road chill

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For the most part, the Sai Sha Road, between Sai Kung and Ma On Shan, is single carriageway and winding; by Hong Kong standards it is a pretty road. Once in a while, though, its traffic bunches up behind a slow-moving vehicle and things get ugly.

One morning a couple of weeks ago, for example, a queue built up behind a cement mixer and a bicycle - to be fair to the cyclist, it was the lorry that set the snail's pace. Before long, the following pack began leaning on their horns. There was nowhere for the lorry to pull into so the ever- more boisterous procession continued its crawl. It's feasible that one of the following drivers was frustrated at being kept from the baby delivery room at the Prince of Wales Hospital - but all 10, 12, 15?

The official response to occasional hindrances such as this is to lay waste to great swathes of countryside to provide more lanes - or place a highway on stilts over the water - but there is another way: the average Joe Motorist could learn a bit of patience. The constant honking of horns for no reason other than to vent frustration is unfair to the people living by the road and constantly looking for a chance to swerve round a lorry is dangerous. If it is imperative to be at a certain place at a certain time, leave a minute or two earlier to allow for hold-ups.